


Kindled By the Dying Embers

by This Waiting Heart (ThisWaitingHeart)



Category: The Terror (TV 2018)
Genre: (after a fashion), (at least there's nothing that says it isn't), (i guess), (or at least that's what they think), Canon Compliant, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Missing Scene, Unrequited Crush, some of the others get mentioned but really it's just the two of them
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-06
Updated: 2019-12-06
Packaged: 2021-02-25 23:03:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,452
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21688048
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThisWaitingHeart/pseuds/This%20Waiting%20Heart
Summary: Little did not meet his eyes, preferring instead to keep his own trained at some invisible spot on the floor, as was his habit. He had pulled back, his back rigid and his hands clenching and unclenching at his sides, but otherwise not giving any indication as to where his thoughts were headed.They stood like this for what felt to Thomas like a long time – still only a few feet apart, but with an unbearable chasm dividing them suddenly and absolutely.“Are we still talking about the burden of command?” he asked quietly when the tension between them became too much.(I know this isn't a summary. I'm not very good at summaries.)
Relationships: Thomas Jopson/Lt Edward Little
Comments: 6
Kudos: 42





	Kindled By the Dying Embers

**Author's Note:**

  * For [whalersandsailors](https://archiveofourown.org/users/whalersandsailors/gifts), [onstraysod](https://archiveofourown.org/users/onstraysod/gifts).

> Just a couple of things that should be mentioned:  
a) I have no idea where this came from. None. It just happened, and, in fact, I wrote most of this in one go.  
b) ... consequentially, this is un-betaed and pretty much written without any elaborate plotting or, *gasp*, research. Yeah, I didn't even rewatch the relevant episodes. Please excuse any mistakes, I just couldn't be bothered - otherwise this would never have been finished <strike>(just like my other writing projects).</strike>  
c) Apologies to the Les Mis & Harry Potter peeps who are (hopefully) still waiting for updates (and my thesis supervisor); 'without any elaborate plotting or research' pretty much explains why this writing project is finished while none of the others are  
d) This is for whalersandsailors & onstraysod, who are awesome people and write wonderful fic. Apparently I'm part of this ship now, though I secretly suspect we're all bound for shipwreck <strike>(like everyone else on this cruise).</strike> Sorry for the terrible joke. Not sorry for making Jopson quote Lt. William 'I hate turnips' Bush.  
e) The title is from Jethro Tull's _Fire At Midnight_ because I felt like it and because I can.
> 
> [EDIT: I corrected a couple of spelling mistakes and stray prepositions. Also, apologies to Jimmy Fitzjimmy because I apparently completely forgot ge got promoted to captain already.]

When Thomas came back from checking up on the captain after the command meeting, Lieutenant Little was still in the great cabin. He was sitting just where Thomas and the other officers had left him, at the head of the table, papers and charts spread out before him. If anything, he looked even more dejected than he had earlier. He had sunken in on himself, his shoulders slumped, and his face buried in his hands.

Someone had turned down the lights – Thomas suspected Lt. Irving; the man was usually considerate like that – and the only one left burning was the one right above the table. The warm, golden sheen of the petroleum lamp gleamed on the glasses on the table and the buttons on the lieutenant’s uniform, but it also threw stark shadows over his hands and face where he was bent forward in his chair.

As he carefully slid the door to the captain’s berth closed behind him, Thomas wondered whether Little was crying.

If he was, he did not make a sound of it.

Little was very still, his shoulders moving with his breathing almost imperceptibly under all those layers of broadcloth and stiff manners. 

Crying or no, Thomas had no intention of disturbing him in his reverie; god knows he got little enough peace as it was. Bowl and washcloth balanced in one hand, Thomas tiptoed around him on his way out of the cabin. He almost made it.

A couple of steps from the door, his toes caught on one of the floorboards. It had always been crooked, made worse now by the increasing slant of the ship as it was beset by the ice. He usually managed to avoid the offending edge, but today his attention was occupied elsewhere, partly with the captain, and partly with Lieutenant Little’s distress. And so, Thomas stumbled, catching himself on the doorjamb just in time. Frigid, soapy water sloshed over his hand, drenching his sleeve and his shirt cuff and leaving a dark stain on his trousers.

Little stirred at the sound, the legs of his chair scraping along the floorboards.

“Jopson? Are you alright?”

At the sound of the lieutenant’s voice – a little rough, if from emotion or the cold Thomas found hard to determine – he straightened his back and turned around. He shifted the bowl into his other hand and tried to shake off the water from his left as well as he could.

“I’m fine, sir. Nothing damaged but my pride.”

He followed up his words with a sympathetic, reassuring smile, the kind he usually reserved for the captain when he was in a particularly foul mood.

Lieutenant Little did not return the gesture. He looked – well. He looked tired, most of all. He always did these days, and the low lights in the cabin did not do his complexion any favours, either. Little was still a handsome man, with his cut-glass cheekbones, dark curls and long lashes – at least, Thomas had always thought him so – but the shadows under his eyes had darkened over the last months, and his brows now seemed to be knotted in a perpetual frown that Thomas would have loved to smooth away if he’d only had the chance. He doubted the Arctic had been much kinder to himself, but it still pained him to see his shipmates brought so low by it, and Lieutenant Little most of all.

Tonight, there was something else underneath the mask of fossilized exhaustion Little wore almost daily now. A dark, burning despair that shone unmistakably in his eyes for a moment before he caught himself and looked away. So he had been crying, and he was too embarrassed to let Thomas see it.

Instead, he got up heavily and began busying himself with the charts that still lay open on the desk from the earlier meeting.

It took Thomas only a handful of steps to cross the cabin. He gingerly placed the now half-empty bowl on the seat of one of the chairs and reached for the charts.

“Here, sir – let me help you with that.”

Little froze, his hands – nails clean and clipped short, but skin chapped and reddened from the cold, Thomas noted – hovering awkwardly over the chart he had been in the process of rolling up.

“You shouldn’t –“ Little began, clearly unsure where he was going with this.

Thomas gently took the chart from his hands and rolled it up dexterously.

“With all due respect, sir – it’s my job, and I absolutely should. You, on the other hand, have more important things to concern yourself with than the state of the great cabin.”

He had tried for levity mixed with gentle admonishment, but judging from the look on Little’s face, he had completely missed the mark.

Little’s hunted expression was back, his eyes large and shining wet, his lips slightly parted in silent astonishment. He had his eyes fixed on Thomas, but he wasn’t sure Little was really taking him in. He seemed to be far away, lost on some painful path of rumination that Thomas’ words had set him on.

He took one rasping breath, then another. Then he seemed to fold in on himself, his breathing now coming in great, shuddering gasps, his eyes screwed shut tightly. There were actual tears now, too. Thomas watched in astonishment as Little clasped one hand firmly around the edge of the table, his knuckles turning white, the other one pressed over his mouth in an attempt at muffling the great sobs that made his shoulders heave. It was a futile endeavour and painful to watch.

Thomas was dumbfounded for a moment, surprised by Little’s unexpected outburst of emotion and the loss of control of one always so contained and correct. Then he reacted, on instinct more than anything else, his need to comfort momentarily overruling his prudence in all matters of honour. His heart ached for Little in his obvious pain and to his astonishment, when he reached out for him, the lieutenant let himself be pulled into an embrace almost without resistance.

Little was very stiff for a moment, his breathing still heavy, but then he practically melted into Thomas’ arms. Rubbing gentle circles into the lieutenant’s back, Thomas realized how unbearably lonely the man must be. And touch-starved, judging from the way he buried his face in the crook of Thomas’ neck.

In a way, they all were, with the chances for real physical contact so few and far between – Thomas no less than anyone else, and the officers probably even more so than the men. There were reasons for that, of course, and rules which it was probably foolish to break like this – and never mind all the other implications should anyone walk in on them. But Thomas was sure that he would have welcomed to be comforted like this himself, were he in a similar position, and besides, it was working.

Gradually, Little’s breathing slowed down, and the great, heaving sighs became fewer and fewer. He did not let go of Thomas, whom he had pulled closer of his own accord, but he also no longer cried so heavily and openly.

Thomas did not fare quite so well. At the same pace that Little grew calmer, he felt his own breath quicken as the realization of their proximity began to sink in. He willed himself not to think of it. Any of it.

Not to think of how warm Little was against him, his chest broad and solid against his own, his hands curled into his waistcoat at his back, pulling him close. The way his nose just barely touched the skin over his collar, and how he could still feel the warmth of Little’s breath through several layers of cloth. His hair against his jaw, and his lips hovering over his pulse point.

Thomas knew he shouldn’t want this – should never have wanted anything like it at any time before, either – but the truth was that he did, and urgently. He _wanted _to pull Little closer, to slide his hands from where they lay on the lieutenant’s shoulder blades to somewhere under his coat, and further, even. Somewhere hidden underneath all those thick, stiff layers of clothes must be the man, after all, and it was him Thomas was after.

But it would not do to forget his place so entirely; comforting a man in distress was one thing, fantasizing about undressing him quite another. 

“Sir –. “ Thomas shifted, carefully trying to get a little distance between their bodies before Little noticed the effect he was having on him.

“Sir, do you think it would help you to share the burden with someone?”

_Someone who isn’t me_, he supplied in his head. _Someone who wouldn’t much rather kiss you_.

“Only, I’ve been thinking it might help if you tried to speak about your worries with –“ He groped around for suggestions. “The doctors perhaps, or… Captain Fitzjames?”

Little drew away quite suddenly, a dark blush spreading over his nose and cheeks. It made his freckles stand out in a way that Thomas found highly distracting.

“And what good would that do?”, Little asked, anger stealing its way into his voice. “I’m sure the man already thinks me a fool for harping on about supplies and suggesting we wait for the captain’s recovery before making any decisions. I don’t need to give him any more proof of my incompetence.”

“But–“

“Jopson, you of all people must know that there are things which must be kept private.”

Thomas did know that. Oh god, did he know it. But it did not do to dwell on these things, so he forced himself to push the thought away and focus on Little and the conversation at hand. He had the sneaking suspicion they had taken a wrong turn somewhere, and that he had to retrace his steps to figure out exactly how and why.

Little did not meet his eyes, preferring instead to keep his own trained at some invisible spot on the floor, as was his habit. He had pulled back, his back rigid and his hands clenching and unclenching at his sides, but otherwise not giving any indication as to where his thoughts were headed.

They stood like this for what felt to Thomas like a long time – still only a few feet apart, but with an unbearable chasm dividing them suddenly and absolutely.

“Are we still talking about the burden of command?” he asked quietly when the tension between them became too much.

Little still refused to look up. If anything, the blush across his nose and cheeks deepened.

The silence, or at least something approximating silence, stretched out around them. The ship and the ice were never entirely silent, but inside the great cabin, the only sound was their breathing, his own slow and steady, Little’s a little rough and jagged.

“Yes,” the lieutenant finally murmured, his voice catching on the single syllable. “The burden of command. If that is all you want to speak about.”

Little finally raised his eyes, but instead of meeting Thomas’s, he let his gaze wander over to the captain’s berth.

“Forgive me for keeping you from your duties.”

This time, it was Little’s turn to head for the door, and he had nearly reached it when Thomas realized what Little had really been asking, what he had not dared to put into more words.

“Sir, wait!”

Thomas was with him again in a handful of steps, avoiding the treacherous edge this time, and reaching for Little’s arm as he made to open the door. Little turned towards him, and there was the question again, in his eyes and in the way he angled his entire body towards him. It was a question Thomas had neither expected nor dared to ask, but one he was only too eager to answer.

Before he could think about it any more (and talk himself out of it, like he would have if given half the chance), he crossed the distance between them and caught Little’s face with one hand, pulling him in for a kiss.

It was a rather sloppy, ungraceful kiss at first.

Neither of them had done this in a while, and it took them a moment to arrange themselves in a way that was actually pleasurable, but then – Oh. But then!

After the initial fumble, Thomas managed to guide Little’s face to a different angle that allowed him to deepen the kiss, his hand cupping the lieutenant’s jaw, his fingers brushing over his whiskers and his cheeks where the clean shave of this morning had given way to an evening stubble. His other hand was buried deep in Little’s curls, which turned out both thicker and softer than he had imagined them to be. Little’s lips were chapped and rough – like his own, Thomas suspected; it came with the weather – but they were also plump and warm and met his own with an enthusiasm that Thomas had not dared to hope for.

Then Little moved against him and Thomas could feel the kiss shift into different territory entirely. They were both breathless now, hands moving from faces to brush over buttons and under coats, roaming wildly, desperately. Thomas revelled in how warm Little was against him, how solid, and how unexpectedly passionate, peppering tiny kisses along his jawline and over his pulse point. This was exactly like he had imagined, and somehow nothing like it at all.

They pulled apart to the sound of footsteps in the passageway, waiting with bated breath for a knock on the cabin door that didn’t come.

Thomas tried desperately to calm his breathing, ragged and unbearably loud in his own ears, but he kept his eyes fixed firmly on Little’s. The lieutenant’s eyes were very large in the dim half-light. Very large, very dark, and still slightly desperate, though Thomas imagined his desperation to be of a different quality now. His own certainly was, though he had been jolted back into reality rather unkindly.

“I should be getting on,” Thomas murmured, putting as much regret into his voice as he could manage and forcing himself to keep his eyes on Little’s despite the overwhelming urge to look away.

“Of course.” Little sounded about as disappointed as he looked, but he nodded and stepped aside to make way for him.

Thomas went back to the chair to pick up the bowl and washcloth and headed back to the door, like he had meant to before this entire mission had been derailed into whatever this was between them now. Awkward, uncertain, like the cooling ashes of a fire after a sudden conflagration. Difficult to carry on from, but difficult to ignore, too.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm really not sure I should be advertising [my tumblr](https://thiswaitingheart.tumblr.com/), but what the hell.


End file.
